Art History 290CW - The City as a Work of Art

This course will focus on city maps and bird's-eye views in order to explore urban representation and symbolism. Emphasis will be on European imagery from the fifteenth to eighteenth centuries, but the overall scope will range from ancient to modern times, encompassing western and non-western places and works. The class includes units on the history, theory, and form of the city (including utopian and ideal cities); approaches to representing the city (maps, models, pictorial views); and case studies (Kaifeng, Kyoto, Paris, Siena, Tenochtitlan, Venice, and others). The overarching goal is to understand how the essence of the city can be expressed in visual form.

Course limited to sophomores, juniors and seniors